Senior living: Color the gray or let it stay?

'Getting my hair done keeps me from looking ancient,' Elizabeth Graves Bass said as her hair stylist applied a honey gold dye to her hair.

Like many women in their sixties and older, Elizabeth has been coloring her hair for years. 'It started when I was a teenager. Much to my mother's disapproval, all us girls would put lemon juice in our hair and sit on the beach, trying to get blond streaks. I was already blond, but I wanted to be blonder.' It was not until the 1960s and the advent of 'frosting,' a process of coloring only segments of the hair, that she began to have her hair colored on a regular basis. 'Frosting was trendy. It highlighted the natural gold of my hair and everyone I knew was doing it.' Over time, the frosting masked the gray in her hair. But eventually, there was too much gray to mask and she began having an all over color applied.

Betty Moore says the same thing happened to her. With a laugh, she said, 'One day my hair dresser told me that there was no brown hair left to frost. I was used to having dark brown hair with highlights in it. Now my whole head was a frosty gray. That did it.'

Betty decided to go to a reddish blond color and has never turned back. 'And I don't plan on it now. I'm not ready to be gray and I never will be.'

Betty just spent six weeks of rehabilitation for a broken femur and maintained her hair regimen throughout. 'Coloring my hair makes me feel better about myself,' she said, 'especially while I was in rehab.'

Women have been changing the color of their hair for centuries. The ancient Egyptians used natural dyes like henna and kohl to darken or alter the color of their hair. In the 1800s, the advent of hydrogen peroxide led to a dramatic increase in the number of blonds.

The first coloring shampoo was released in the 1930s. As color technology has advanced, so has the number of women who use chemical processes like all over color, frosting, and highlighting. In a Hair Color Research Update, P&G Beauty Science noted 'at least 88 percent of all women feel their hair has an effect on their self-confidence.'

In an informal survey at several hair salons around town, hair stylists said that 70 to 75 percent of their clientele 60 and older colored their hair. One stylist pointed to her hair and said, 'Me included. If you use the right color, you can take 10 years or more off a person's age.'

The most common colors used are multiple variations of blond and light brown.

'The rule of thumb is to stay one or two shades lighter or darker than the original natural hair color,' one stylist noted. 'Going too dark or too light accentuates the lines in the face and ages the person.'

But what about those women who decide to go gray?

'It all depends on the color of the gray,' Ann Ellis said. 'I had medium brown hair when I was young. It wasn't until I was in my forties that my hair turned a mousy gray. That's when I began coloring it a dark ash blond. I kept it that way for over thirty years.'

Now in her 80s, Ann colored her hair up until three years ago. 'I got curious to see what my real hair looked like so I began letting it grow out.'

She was delighted with the look. Over time, her hair had become a lustrous bright white around her face and a light salt and pepper in the back.

Martha MacDonald, on the other hand, says she would start coloring her hair again if she could find the right color.

'When I was young, I was what you would call a 'dirty blond.' I used to color my hair with lemon juice and vinegar to bring out the blond highlights.'

When her hair began turning gray, she experimented with color until she found a blond velvet rinse that suited her perfectly.

Unfortunately, the company stopped making the product so she let her hair grow out to its natural white. But she's still searching for that elusive color for her hair. 'I want a streaky look and I just can't find anything that works. But,' she confesses, 'I do have tiny traces of blond added to my hair each time I have it done.'

Women aren't alone in the use of color in their hair. The percentage of American men between ages 50 and 63 coloring their hair is now 11 percent according to Kavita Daswani writing for the Los Angles Times.

Not too many men have their hair colored in the salons surveyed in Vero Beach. Occasionally, one or two will come in, but the majority of men color their hair at home. The Learning Channel reported that men's home hair-color sales increased by 50 percent in just five years. However, the selection of men's hair color available in local drug stores is very limited in comparison to that for women.

When asked about coloring his hair, an older gentleman who elected to remain anonymous responded, 'Probably not. Since I'm beginning to go bald too, I'll probably do a Bruce Willis and just shave my head.'